


I Like What We Have

by quicksparrows



Series: Side by Side – Chrobin [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 03:03:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4547748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksparrows/pseuds/quicksparrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chrom drives her crazy -- it was just her luck that she'd be found and taken in by someone like him, someone who doesn't care for consequences and charges in without thinking, someone who eludes her best efforts to predict and plan. He takes up too much space in bed, too! But they enjoy each other regardless, don't they? </p><p>A first kiss and the following run-in with Frederick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Like What We Have

Frederick is driving Ada insane.

In a weird way, she respects the dedication that he has for his duty, even when she gets the brunt of his protectiveness. She’s been with the Shepherds’ division of the Ylissean army for some months now, serving as tactician, and yet he has not let up even a lick. He doubts her intentions approximately twice a day, and if not by directly questioning her motives, it’s with little looks, little scoffs, and little remarks. She’d almost prefer he just bring an axe down on her “as a precaution” than deal with the long war of passive-aggression.

It is particularly wearing, of course, because she has no memory of anything before the field. His disapproval presumes he knows more about her than _she_ does, and that is not a comfortable feeling –– if she had her memories intact, perhaps she would at least know if he was dead wrong or worse, dead _right._

This is a particularly troubling thought when she has grown to be very fast friends with Chrom. The prince of Ylisse stands in stark opposition to his right-hand man in that he patently refuses to entertain the idea that Ada poses any risk to them at all. It is his confidence in her that makes tolerable Frederick’s persistent insistence that she is a creeping danger.

She’s thinking about exactly this when Chrom waves a hand in front of her face, and she snaps to. 

They’re at the dinner table. Her fork is half-way to her mouth, hovering in mid-air with little bits of potato threatening to topple off. She’s been staring into space for gods knows how long.

“Hey,” Chrom says. He has this goofy look on his face that is both endearing and prone to driving Ada nuts. He is in remarkably good spirits for a man whose nation is playing at war with Plegia –– Ada half wonders if Emmeryn took all the studiousness in the family and left Chrom with nothing.

“Hey?” she replies, looking at him properly.

“We’ll be hitting the border to Regna-Ferox soon,” Chrom says. “Maybe with two more days’ march.”

She looks at him blankly. 

“Okay,” she says. He’s leaning across the table towards her, still, and his bangs are falling in his face. She has the fleeting urge to brush them out of his eyes, but she resists. “Is there anything I should be prepared for?”

 “Snow,” Chrom says. “Lots of it. How are you in cold weather?”

 “I know there’s snow,” she says, “my memory isn’t THAT bad. I mean anything I should be prepared for tactically.”

"Do you want to go over the maps again?” he asks.

“Sure,” she says. She’s not getting anywhere with lunch, anyway, so she pushes aside her plate only to watch Chrom pick it up for her.

“I’ll get that,” he says.

“What a gentleman,” Ada snorts, standing up to follow him. He laughs, shifting the plate to his other hand so he can give her a firm clap on the shoulder.

“I try,” he says. “I had those etiquette classes, you know.”

She looks at him with narrowed eyes, though the smile lingers on her lips. Chrom flashes her a grin. Too soon, she decides, so she just laughs and bumps him with her hip hard enough to nearly knock the plate out of his hand. He catches himself somewhat gracelessly.

“Too soon?” he asks her, amused.

“No, I don’t think so,” she says. “I still owe you a rock to the head, though.”

Chrom just laughs, setting her plate down in the basin at the far end of the table.

Together they head to the royal siblings’ tent, where the Shepherds have conducted all their formal meetings –– a delegation this small has no need to pack a dedicated war room, Chrom told her, though he’s promised her a great one should she ever be needed in real war. That is all fine by Ada, who wants for little and is just satisfied with the kindnesses and trust she has been afforded as a complete stranger to their army. What kind of luck has she had to fall in with a prince?

She sits down at Chrom’s desk and pulls the map towards her. Chrom leans over her shoulder, one hand on the back of her chair.

“Ferox of a nation of warriors,” he says, even though she knows that part well. “They’ve built much of the countryside for the purpose of war and defense, so odds are we’ll be traveling through regions that have really good defensive measures set up.”

“I doubt that’ll be a problem if we’re dealing with Risen swarms,” Ada says, “If they’ve made it that far north, anyway. They won’t know how to use the terrain strategically. But if we’re dealing with people…”

Chrom shakes his head.

“I told you,” he says, “we’re seeking an audience with the Khans. I doubt we’ll be fighting with them.”

“It’s my job to be prepared regardless,” she says. “Do you realize how many of these roads are essentially funnels to narrow an opponent’s formation? That’s a problem in almost any situation.”

Chrom leans over a little shoulder to look at the map. He leans in such a way that his arm almost wraps around her shoulders, and she turns just enough to look at his face. He traces one finger along the line of a road and then stops at the gap.

“You’re right,” he says.

Ada glances up at him and finds herself transfixed by how close his face is, and surprisingly, he seems to have noticed the same. Up close, she can see the faint freckles born from all his time in the sun, and there's a few stray strands of hair falling in his eyes. His eyelashes are dark and his lips are boyishly full and a little wind-chapped.

"Hey..." Chrom trails, softly. He's so close that the tip of his nose almost touches hers.

Ada isn't sure which of them leans in first, but they certainly meet in the middle, lips brushing hesitantly at first and then growing more confident. He gets a hand on her waist and she leans in closer, and then she breaks it off.

"Hey," she repeats. "What's this about?"

He flushes, suddenly, and Ada finds it funny that though they've both seen each other naked, THIS has him self-conscious.

"I'm sorry," he says. 

"I'm not," Ada replies.

"Well, I'm not either," he says, sheepishly. "I just... You stopped."

They're still so close. Ada drops her gaze for a second, settling her eyes on his lips, and then she says: "Shut up, Chrom."

And she kisses him.

It's strange what moves the body, sometimes. Ada has no memory of being intimate, and yet she doesn't think twice about reaching to embrace him, to encourage this completely thoughtless moment. (Not that he needs much encouragement; he is quick to touch her too, one hand cupping her cheek and the other still on her waist.) The way her heartbeat picks up doesn't feel new, nor does the warmth that creeps up the backs of her ears. It's her "first", and yet it doesn’t feel clumsy and new. Chrom meets her rising enthusiasm with his own, and pressing up against her with the length of his body.

Ada never would have expected this just ten minutes ago.

"Oh!" Lissa exclaims, suddenly.

Chrom tears himself from Ada like a startled cat, and with his hands in the air, he looks about ready to start pleading his case. He deflates just as speedily when he realizes who it is.

"Lissa," he hisses. " _Knock_."

"On a tent?" Lissa snorts, and then she laughs –– Ada figures that’s as good of a reaction as any, really. "I see how it is..."

"You didn't see anything," he tells her. " _Nothing._ "

"So don't tell Frederick?" Lissa teases. 

" _No!_ " Chrom says, empathetically. "Not a word. He still doesn't..." He trails off there, glancing sideways at Ada, who suddenly feels very exposed.

"He doesn't trust me," Ada finishes for him. "You can just say that, you know."

Chrom is still red around the face, and suddenly he seems to be full of a tightly coiled, nervous energy.

"Sorry," he says. He reels it in almost frantically, pulling himself together. ”What did you need, Lissa?"

"I totally forgot," she says. When Chrom scowls, she adds: “You know, this is my tent too, do I really NEED anything to be in here?"

"No," Chrom sighs. "Of course not."

"But now it's just weird," Lissa says, with an exaggerated grimace. "Am I supposed to leave, knowing you two are going to go right back to it?"

"No, the moment's gone," Ada says. She’s still feeling a vortex of butterflies in her gut -- both good and bad. "I'm going to go get some reading done, I'll see you both at dinner."

And before Chrom can protest, Ada breezes out. When she’s ten feet from the tent door, she hears Lissa and Chrom start to squabble in the way that only siblings can.

They'll talk later, she decides.   

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Ada!” Chrom says, from her doorway. She looks up to see he’s already invited himself in, which she thinks is quite bold, given multiple recent events.

“Amazing that you still haven’t learned to knock,” she says.

“Well, I didn’t think you’d be bathing,” he says, but it comes with the slightest creep of embarrassment and an apologetic tone. “But I suppose you could be doing any number of other things, so… I’ll knock next time.”

She fixes him with a raised eyebrow, and then she laughs.

“Okay,” she says, closing her book and sitting more upright. “Moving on. What can I do for you, Chrom?”

He looks very briefly surprised.

“I don’t need anything,” he says, “I was just wondering if you wanted some company.”

Ada doesn’t suppose she _needs_ company – with all of the Risen encounters and travel, she’s been behind on her reading, lately, and this trip has included so much time in the saddle that she’s not sure she really fancies giving up a rare moment of quiet. But still, they have become such fast friends over these past few months, and though her book calls to her, Chrom commands her attention. 

It’s also difficult to forget that less than six hours ago they were kissing in his tent, and she has yet to figure out what a “later” talk is supposed to sound like.

_Sorry, I had no idea I’d feel this way about you? Sorry, despite my best intentions I feel it was a mistake? Sorry, I hardly even know who I am and maybe my decisions aren’t the most informed?_

_Sorry, isn’t this dangerous?_

“I wouldn’t mind,” she says. He’s looking at her as if he’s not only noticed her delayed response but is also _questioning_ it, so she adds: “It’s already eleven, though. Won’t Frederick be after you to tuck you in and read you a bedtime story?”

“Very funny,” Chrom says, crossing the floor to sit down on her bed – she’s sitting in the only proper chair available, after all. “I’ll have you know Frederick hasn’t read me a bedtime story in something like ten years.”

“Oh, so he _has_ at some point?” Ada grins. “Because he’s always saying he’s a knight—"

“––Not a nanny,” they say together, and they laugh. They have found each other alike in this regard, fond of banter and sharing a mutual competitiveness, keeping easy pace with each other on the battlefield and off. It makes their occasional tiffs that much more heated. 

“He’s pretty predictable,” Chrom admits. “But it’s probably more because Lissa and I make for pretty demanding charges at times.”

“I can’t imagine,” she says.

“He’s a pushover when it comes to us,” Chrom adds.

“Well, that’s good for me,” Ada says, “If you didn’t have him convinced, I doubt I’d be your tactician.”

Chrom is contemplative at that.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t think it’s that bad. I think if I were really making a poor choice, he’d put his foot down.” He catches her eye head-on for an instant, and he adds, a bit more seriously: “You know, you’re the best thing that has happened in a long time.”

Ada’s brief, flickering feeling of unworthiness is somewhat drowned out by this compliment. _The best thing in a long time._ She has to wonder what that entails, all-in, but she doesn’t have to. Chrom continues:

“We haven’t lost a unit since, and I’ve really liked having you at my side in battle. I think we work well together… when we were routing that swarm earlier, it felt almost like you were reading my mind. I’d strike, then you, then me…  I guess you’d know when to act with anyone, but when I partner with Vaike or Sully, still after all these years we’ve got to hesitate in case we move at the same time. But you know exactly what to do.”

“Big compliments tonight,” she says. It comes out almost wary.

Chrom looks at her, eyes wide, maybe a little apprehensive of his own words.

“I just don’t want you to feel like you’re here despite Frederick,” he says, quickly. “I want you to know that you’re here because you’re an excellent tactician and a good friend, irregardless of what Frederick says. I really like what we have.”

(A tiny voice at the back of her mind notes _irregardless_ and wonders if Chrom hadn’t missed a few grammar lessons in favour of more swordplay, but Ada decides to not be pedantic.)

“Chrom, enough,” she says, because she isn’t sure what else to say to that. Truth be told, there are a million ways she could express her gratitude for having woken up under the gaze of people that would take her in and call her friend and provide for her despite her amnesia, but words could never be enough. “You know I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”

As few as these words are, they’re enough for Chrom, who swells with a bit of pride, sitting up straighter and smiling a little more pleased. He pats the bed next to him.

“Sit with me,” he says.

Ada knows he’s going to bring up what happened earlier, so when she gets out of her seat to join him, she brings it up herself: “This isn’t going to be weird between us, right?” she asks. “This conversation feels… off.”

“Because we kissed?” Chrom asks.

“Yes,” Ada replies.

“I don’t think so,” Chrom says. He’s leaning back against his hands in such a casual way that it drives her crazy – how can he be such a genuine person, having this conversation without a trace of concern? How can he have such convictions all the time, how can be he so blisteringly self-assured? Gods, if she could bottle that…

“Okay,” Ada replies. She sits facing him, and he looks at her with a smile that she mirrors. She can’t help it. “But what happens next?”

Chrom watches her for a second, and then he asks: “Does anything need to happen next?”

“No,” she says, “but I don’t really know what to make of it, either. We’re not just friends, or just commander and subordinate. We’re both.”

“Does that bother you?” Chrom asks.

 _No,_ Ada wants to say, but she knows it’s not true. Truth be told, there aren’t really any power dynamics between them, as the formalities of his station have been lost on her since day one, as many things tend to be with her limited memory. Chrom has also never asked it of her. But she knows that just because she doesn’t care doesn’t mean others won’t –– Frederick would probably lose his head.

“It’ll bother other people,” she says, reasonably.

“This has nothing to do with other people,” he says, breezily. It’s so carefree that she wants to believe him, and it makes her feel so suggestible. She likes it. Chrom continues, one hand reaching for her knee, a smile on his face. “Let’s just… have some fun with it. I’m not thinking about it like a lord, so you don’t have to think about it like a tactician.”

“But…” She stops for a split second to laugh. “I think about _everything_ like a tactician!” And then both of them laugh together.

“Of course you do,” Chrom says. He has that little smirk around the corners of his mouth, like she’s _so_ predictable, and Ada reaches to poke him in the ribs, but he blocks her with an arm.

“Excuse you,” she says, trying again, and this time she gets him. He arches himself away from her and then, laughing, flops onto his back, so she does too. “You can be carefree and effusive and all those things all you want, but someone has to be practical.”

“That’s Frederick’s job,” Chrom says. She teasingly reaches to cover his mouth with her hand, and he lets her.

“Shut up about Frederick,” she says, and Chrom chuckles under her hand. “I don’t want to think about him when I’ve got you here like this.”

Chrom takes her wrist and pulls her hand aside; she lets him go just the same, and she shifts along the bed to lay next to him properly. Her knee bumps against his thigh, and their hands are together, but otherwise, they don’t touch at all.

“I like what we have, Chrom,” she admits. She doesn't want any more, or any less, but she doesn't say it. She doesn't feel she knows what he wants.

“So do I,” Chrom says.

They settle in for a long talk about nothing in particular – funny things from his childhood, anecdotes from her history books, an absurd thing they witnessed in camp that morning, the way so-and-so sneaks off to the barracks with such-and-such but isn’t half as sneaky as he thinks he is, what markets are on the road ahead. They can always fill hours that way, though it’s usually on horseback on the road, talking until they’re rehashing topics for the umpteenth time. It’s not much different lying in bed, though occasionally he touches his fingers to hers, or someone rolls away in laughter only to roll back again and continue.

“Don’t you dare fall asleep here,” she says to him, when the hours creep by into the early hours of the morning. They’re both so sleepy the conversation is getting stilted.

“I won’t!” Chrom promises, but forget it, Chrom dozes off like that, stretched out comfortably with his fingers wound with hers. Ada’s cot isn’t terribly wide, so while she tries to balance a respectable distance with hanging off the edge of the bed, his broad shoulders don’t make it terribly easy.

“I’m not sleeping on the floor, _your highness_ ,” she tells him, stubborn but fond. There’s no response, obviously. “Deal with it, you big lug.”

So she settles in, too.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Ada wakes as usual, but in a sour mood. She hadn’t slept well with Chrom hogging most of the cot, but there’s not a chance of getting back to sleep with more of the same, so instead she just lounges in what little space Chrom has left her, reading her book. It tires on the arms to hold the book over her head – since when does she do _light_ reading? – but she’ll be damned if she’s driven from her own bed.

Still, there’s also something nice about sharing a bed with him, even if it wasn’t exactly restful sleep. She’d woken up at one point to his arm around her waist, and though it concerned her greatly as a tactician with her commander, it wasn’t at all unwelcome as a woman with a man. If he weren’t fast asleep, she might have even thought the gesture to be deliberate.

She glances away from the pages of her history book to look at him. He’s still fast asleep now, cheek against the pillow. His bangs are falling into his eyes again, and the back of his hair is mussed up in a way that it sticks out funny from the crown of his head. His eyelashes are long and dark. His lips have a surprisingly defined little quirk in the middle. He is incredibly handsome, she acknowledges to herself for the first time, even though subconsciously she’s always known it.

He shifts in his sleep and knees her, hitting that one spot at the juncture of her knee where it really digs. He is also incredibly annoying, she mentally adds as she shifts over an inch. Pity the woman who shares a bed with him the rest of their lives.

“Ada,” Frederick calls from outside her tent. There is a crisp urgency in his tone that could be either the end of the world or Lissa having an untied bootlace – all problems are equal in under Frederick’s booming commands. For that reason alone Ada takes her sweet time peeling herself from bed, but Frederick keeps calling, as she expects him to: “Ada, this is an emergency! Are you decent?”

Ada scowls.

“Decent enough for an emergency,” she calls back, grumbling curtly after: “Whatever the hell that means.”

Frederick and his priorities.

She is almost at the tent flap when he opens it, and she is greeted by his appraising look at her messy ponytail and the flimsy tank top and thin cotton pants that make up her pajamas. He frowns.

“I’d hardly call that decent,” he says, averting his eyes and sounding, thoroughly unimpressed.

She almost tells him to shut up, but instead she just sighs and says: “What emergency?”

“Lord Chrom slipped from his bed and has not been seen at all this morning, and his horse is here despite his being missing from camp,” Frederick says. “I have already conducted a thorough search, as _you_ saw fit to sleep in, but I will need your assistance in guiding in arranging a search party.”

Ada sighs.

Of course. _Of course_ this would happen.

She drags the tent flap back further and gestures blindly behind her, towards the sleeping figure in her bed. Frederick peers around Ada to see and then adopts a look of notable displeasure. When he opens his mouth to say something, Ada cuts him off.

“I’m not going to get into yet another debate about whether I’m trustworthy, Frederick,” she says. “We were talking late and he fell asleep, so I let him stay.”

“I’m not interested in ‘yet another’ debate with you,” Frederick says, though his tone says otherwise. “But I will still be making clear my concerns to Lord Chrom.”

“That’s fine,” Ada says, curtly. “You can go.”

“As you wish,” Frederick says, clipped, and he turns away. Ada scowls at the back of his head as he goes.

The second the tent flap closes, Ada strides back over to her bed and picks up her pillow from under Chrom’s princely head, and she hits him in the shoulder with it.

“Wake up!” she hisses.

It only takes two strikes before Chrom is awake and raising an arm to defend himself.

“Ada,” he complains, “what the hell are you doing?”

“Frederick already hates me enough without you falling asleep in my bed!” she hisses at him. “You shouldn’t have fallen asleep here, you should have gone back no matter how late it is.”

He makes a grab at the pillow when she raises it to bop him again, but he misses and she whaps him again.

“Well, why didn’t you wake me up and tell me to go?!” Chrom retorts, but then he laughs. “Stop that! Ada!”

“Frederick—“

Chrom manages to grab the pillow, and he pulls it so hard that Ada nearly loses her balance. They tussle for a second, and then Ada manages to finish her sentence: “Frederick nearly called a search party when he saw your bed was empty!”

“Why?” Chrom says. “I’m barely fifty feet from my bed.”

“Yes, but he didn’t expect to find you here!”

Chrom laughs.

“Stop laughing,” she says. “This isn’t funny. I want to get along with Frederick, and now he probably thinks I’m seducing you before… before doing something! I don’t even know what I’d do!”

“Kill me, probably,” Chrom says. To his credit, he eases back on the laughter, even though he still sounds plenty amused. “It’s not a big deal, Ada. I trust you completely.”

Ada doesn’t know if she’s ever been a romantic, but it’s difficult to be angry with someone who trusts her so implicitly. Still, even if he makes her heart flutter, she has to impress upon him the opposite: “It is a big deal! Come on, you are my commander, and you can’t be so cavalier about this.”

“I’m not a cavalier, I’m a lord,” he says.

She gives him the most dead-eyed look she can, and he watches her for a moment, and then he takes a deep breath and relaxes somewhat, smile fading a little around the corners.

“Okay, okay. I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ll talk to him. I’ll impress upon him that you are not seducing me. Well, not for the purposes of assassinating me, at least.”

Ada gives a little huff and she sits down on the bed. He just stretches out on his side again, propped up on one elbow and watching her. Seducing him _. Really._ She should kick him out of her bed, especially the way he lounges like he owns it. (Which he does, quite literally, but that’s pedantic.)

“I’m not seducing you _period_ ,” she says, but she folds her arms and leans against him so thoughtlessly that neither of them put any stock in that.

“For what it’s worth,” he says, reaching to trail his fingers along her spine, up the back of her tank top, “I think Frederick would be like that with anyone.”

“Not much of a relief, to be honest,” she says. Ada sighs and slouches entirely against him, shoulders against his side, and he moves with her, hand moving to her shoulders. “We should keep this quiet, anyway.”

“Okay,” he says. “Whatever makes you most comfortable.”

She wonders if he could take his heart off of his sleeve even to save his life, but well, she supposes that time would have to tell.

 

 


End file.
